Archive for March, 2019

WFS News: Fossil site shows signs of meteor impact

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev Sixty-six million years ago, a giant meteor slammed into Earth off the coast of modern-day Mexico. Firestorms incinerated the landscape for miles around. Even creatures thousands of miles away were doomed on that fateful day, if not by fire and brimstone, then by mega-earthquakes and waves of unimaginable size. Now, scientists […]

WFS News: Fossil barnacles reveal prehistoric whale migrations

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev Isotopes from fossil coronulid barnacle shells record evidence of migration in multiple Pleistocene whale populations Many whales take long journeys each year, spending summers feeding in cold waters and moving to warm tropical waters to breed. One theory suggests that these long-distance migrations originated around 5 million years […]

WFS News: Surprise beach find adds missing piece to fossil record

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev A beach can be a place of discovery. Broken shells, whimsical weathered bits of wood, flotsam from a foreign corner of the globe. You never know what treasure you might find. In July of 2017, the Reising family of Seward, Alaska was enjoying a picnic lunch on a […]

WFS News: Oldest Frog Relative from North America

@ WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev It’s possible that during the Triassic period, the crocodile-like phytosaur snapped at a frog-like creature, but missed. It’s a good thing it did, because 216 million years later, paleontologists have found the fossils of these tiny creatures, the oldest known frog relative from North America, a new […]

WFS News: Computer simulations on swimming of Ichthyosaurs

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev Using computer simulations and 3D models, palaeontologists from the University of Bristol have uncovered more detail on how Mesozoic sea dragons swam. The research, published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, sheds new light on their energy demands while swimming, showing that even the first […]

WFS News: Origins of giant extinct New Zealand bird adzebill traced to Africa

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev Scientists have revealed the African origins of New Zealand’s most mysterious giant flightless bird — the now extinct adzebill — showing that some of its closest living relatives are the pint-sized flufftails from Madagascar and Africa. Led by the University of Adelaide, the research in the journal Diversity showed that […]

WFS News: Prehistoric worms populated the sea bed 500 million years ago

@WFS,World Fossil Society,Riffin T Sajeev,Russel T Sajeev Prehistoric worms populated the sea bed 500 million years ago — evidence that life was active in an environment thought uninhabitable until now, research by the University of Saskatchewan (USask) shows. The sea bed in the deep ocean during the Cambrian period was thought to have been inhospitable […]